


ride

by owlinaminor



Series: thorbruce week 2k18 [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Minor Injuries, ThorBruce Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 00:52:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15545991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: Thor sees a flash of green, feels something lift from beneath his back – and then he’s not looking up at the sky any more.





	ride

**Author's Note:**

> written for thorbruce week day two: height difference.

"This is inconvenient,” Thor says.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Valkyrie replies.  Thor can’t quite see her face from this angle, sprawled as he is on his back in the moss, but he imagines she’s smirking at him.  He focuses on watching the clouds in the sky instead.  They’re further away and he has no desire to punch them.

“How would you put it?” Thor asks in Vaklyrie’s general direction.

“I would say, you couldn’t finish an unnecessary recon mission upon which _you_ insisted we embark because you tripped on a root, fell down a hill, and broke your leg.  Your majesty,” she adds, almost as an afterthought.

“Okay, this mission was very necessary,” Thor says.  “I’m not moving our people to New Asgard until we’ve explored every part of the territory.  I want to know all the dangers that could possibly befall them.”

“Dangers.  Right.  Like big, terrifying tree roots.”  Vaklyrie takes a couple of steps closer and then she’s leering over Thor, that self-satisfied smirk in full glory on her face, as though she just speared someone through the chest.  Gods.  It’s worse than he'd pictured.

“Excuse me for caring about the safety of our people,” Thor shoots back.

“Well, excuse me for wanting you to focus on actually _governing_ those people and let someone else do the grunt work.”

“Well, excuse _me_ for _punching you in the face!”_

Thor summons all his strength – imagines Thanos, laughing as he demolishes half of Asgard – and plants his feet flat on the ground, summons the sky with his fists – and _punches_ –

And falls back as a spear of pain shoots up his right leg.

“Shit.”

Valkyrie laughs.  “Nice punch, your highness.”

Thor is weighing the potential satisfaction of kicking her with his good leg against the potential pain of further straining his bad one when he hears crashing noises steadily approaching, accompanied by low grunts.

Valkyrie’s face recedes, returning Thor’s field of vision to bright blue sky.  Lots of clouds, out today.  One of them looks like a rocketship.  Another looks like a sword.  Thor wishes he had a sword right now.  A really long one.

“Hey, big guy,” Valkyrie says.  “Did you do it?”

“Yes.  Hulk made path.”

“Great.  So now I can go and find somewhere with better signal, call for the ship to come get His Majesty King of Not Looking Where He’s Going –”

The crashing noises start up again, growing louder and louder until the ground beside Thor’s head is vibrating, as though he’s at the center of a very small earthquake.

Thor sees a flash of green, feels something lift from beneath his back – and then he’s not looking up at the sky any more.

He notices the warmth first.  It’s not as though he’s particularly sensitive to temperature – he can withstand anything from Muspelheim to Jotunheim and probably even fly through space without a suit, although he’s never tried that for very long.  But he’d been lying on the forest floor for a long time, the cold seeping through his skin and into his bones, and this shift – into two arms, thick and strong and warm enough to content with a small star – is more than welcome.

The warmth is what Thor notices, then the strength.  Hulk lifted him up as though he was nothing and now carries him as though he is nothing – a shade, a shadow, a breath of wind.  Thor has known that Hulk is powerful, of course.  After the fight on Sakaar, they spar at least once a week, testing new moves and pushing the limits of old ones.  Sharpening Hulk’s brute force and keeping Thor’s fire from going out.  But this – being surrounded by his arms, lifted and carried – this is new.

Thor has the oddest sensation of weightlessness.  As though he dove into a lake and is now buoyed up, the water spreading around him to reverse the flow of gravity.

 “You really don’t need to do this,” Valkyrie says.  “I’m sure the ship can get to our location once I call them.”

Hulk shrugs.  The motion shifts Thor’s weight – his shoulders, previously propped against an upper arm, are now cradled in the curve of Hulk’s elbow.

“Hulk wants to do this.”

He can feel the movement of Hulk’s footsteps.  Right, left.  Right, left.  The motion starts at Hulk’s feet, crashing through the underbrush, and moves up – ankles, knees, waist, chest, and into his arms, swaying slightly from side to side.  A lake isn’t quite the right metaphor – this is lying on his back in the ocean, expansive and constantly moving.

Halfway back to the ship, Thor feels his fractured bone begin to push back into place, feels his skin knit together around it.  In another few minutes, he will be able to walk himself.  But he says nothing – leans into Hulk’s hold, pillows his head against one massive bicep.

By the time they reach the ship, he is fast asleep.

 

 

Thor wakes up on a thick mattress, rough and green but radiating heat enough for a small star.

He blinks, clears the clouds of his mind.  He’s lying across Hulk still, sprawled on his back across the big guy’s chest.  But the setting has changed: the forest of midwestern America swapped out for an apartment in the middle of New York City.  Towering trees swapped out for towering bookshelves, birdsong and insect calls swapped out for faint shouts and occasional sirens, wispy clouds swapped out for a cracking ceiling.  Hulk’s favorite mace swapped out for a tiny, colorful book.

Hulk, it seems from Thor’s perspective somewhat beneath the situation, is sitting upright against the headboard, reading.  Or at least, flipping pages back and forth and making the odd _hmm_ noise.  The book is something about beasts that live in a forest, Thor gathers from the cover.  He watches Hulk read for a while, content to lie still in the quiet.

That is, until his stomach reminds him that he hasn’t eaten since breakfast.

Hulk closes the book, careful not to fold or tear any pages, and places it on the night table.

“Thor,” he says.

“Hey.”  Thor rolls over, shifts so that he’s on his stomach, his chin pillowed on crossed arms on top of Hulk’s chest.  “How long was I out?”

Hulk shrugs.  “Flight.  Home.  Dinner.”

“That long, huh?  Did you leave any food for me?”

Hulk fixes him with a blank stare.

“That’s fine, I can order something.”  Thor moves to roll off the bed entirely but Hulk grabs his arm, holds him in place.

“Thor liked ride,” Hulk says.

Thor thinks back – the weightlessness, the smooth motion, the knowledge that he could lie back and relax – okay, it wasn’t bad.  But he has a reputation to uphold.  He can’t just go around sleeping in one of his paramours' arms, warm and comfortable as they may be.

“It was… it was alright.”  He moves to roll away again.  This time Hulk pulls him closer, so that their foreheads are almost touching.

“Hulk not stupid,” he says.  “Thor liked ride.  Thor fell asleep.  Like baby.”

His eyes are wide and dark in the twilight.  You could fit a lifetime of universes in those eyes, Thor thinks, and all of them infinitely kinder than the one he knows.

“Okay, yes,” he says.  “I liked the ride.”

Hulk nods, the movement pushing Thor off to thin sliver of mattress on the right side of the bed.

“Good,” he replies.  “Next workout, Hulk lift Thor.  Tiny baby weight.”

Thor stifles a laugh.  “You mean – just to be clear – you want to use me, Thor, Allfather of Asgard, wielder of Stormbreaker, savior of the known universe, in _weight training?”_

“Yes.”

And then, Thor imagines it.  Being lifted as though he is nothing, carried as though he is nothing, swung and tossed and thrown to the ground only to be picked right back up again.  Perhaps there is a certain… appeal.

“Yes,” Hulk repeats.  He picks back up his book, flips carefully until he reaches the page where he paused earlier.

Thor cranes his head up and presses a kiss to Hulk’s cheek, then rolls off the bed and pads toward the kitchen.

“I’m ordering Chinese,” he calls behind his shoulder.  “You want anything?”

“Hulk wants jiaozi.”

“You got it, big guy.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you laura for suggesting which book hulk should read (it's _where the wild things are)._
> 
> & i'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor)! come follow my quest to post the next of these fics at more reasonable times of day.


End file.
